A personal blog on fatherhood, music and more

It’s never the songs that you expect that send my daughter to sleep. She was very grumpy the other day and refusing to settle at all, but then Motörhead came on 6music and she was asleep within seconds. I have gotten a bit lazy with my searching out new music in recent years, with 6music being my prime source. As I tend to listen at similar times of the day and week, I hear a lot of Marc Riley, a bit of the end of Steve Lamacq and sometimes Cerys Matthews of a weekend. I hear a lot of good music on all, but getting all your music from the same sources does mean it tends towards predictability. I know the kind of things I’ll hear on Marc Riley, but I also know the kind of things I won’t hear, such as any electronic music or hip-hop.

I thought that, once my daughter arrived, I would be hearing even less new music, because I just wouldn’t have the time. The opposite has turned out to be true though, and the reason is I’ve been making more of an effort to seek it out, because of my fears about missing out. I’ve been listening to a lot of Spotify on my way to and from work, checking out new albums I’ve read about or that people have mentioned to me. One of my friends, who listens to a lot more music than I do, very conveniently put together a spottily playlist of new music at just the time I needed one (see below).

I’ve also been seeking out music podcasts, which are surprisingly hard to find, I guess because of licensing restrictions. I’ve found a few good ones though. NPR’s all songs considered is great. Varied, to my taste, and loads of stuff I don’t hear elsewhere. KEXP’s song of the day is mainly orientated towards Pitchfork type bands, but is a nice morsel of new music to start each day. Tom Robinson’s introducing mix tape features very new/unknown bands, so you have to wade through quite a lot of dross, but the few gems make it worthwhile. And then there’s Bleep.com’s podcast and the Solid Steel podcast for my electronic music needs.

So over the last few weeks alone I’ve heard great new (or newish, I’m not exactly claiming to be cutting edge) music from Todd Terje, Jungle, Chvrches, Real Estate, Peals, Dana Buoy, Broncho, Rubblebucket, Karl Hyde & Brian Eno and more, so I’m please to know that becoming a father doesn’t negate one’s enthusiasm for new music even if the days of knowing about every new band are long gone.